We are learning about strikes in Esperanza Rising.
We had Canada presentations in Mr. VanGo's class this afternoon.
Fraction test on Thursday. Please focus on fix-ups.
No spelling this week: we are reviewing Vocabulary words instead.
We are learning about strikes in Esperanza Rising. We had Canada presentations in Mr. VanGo's class this afternoon. Fraction test on Thursday. Please focus on fix-ups.
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More syncopation in Music!
Math Olympiad day! Our first test! Esperanza is still rising! We are AWESOME word detectives. Vocabulary/Spelling tests were done. In K Buddies, half the class made snowflakes, and half the class made word clouds with their K Buddies to show the words in their Day Books. Basketball again! Some people were smiling at the camera on Mr. K's head the whole time on Tuesday.
We solved a hard bar modeling problem in Math today. It was fun to play Math Chairs to review our skills. Area models can be be used to show subtraction. Unfortunately, Monarch Math only works on addition. There is a deep river between Miguel and Esperanza, but H. thinks that is changing. We learned about metaphors today. Can you hear the heartbeat of the land? Mr K wore a camera on his head to record our PE class. We guarded a tennis ball from a partner and practiced dribbling skills.
In Math we used the NY state module lesson to draw area models to demonstrate adding fractions with different denominators. This shows what we are really doing to change fractions to like denominators - we're just cutting them into smaller pieces! The computers were busy in class today as we used websites to learn more about the Great Depression, immigration from Mexico in the 1930s and California in the 1930s. Tomorrow we'll share information with our triad members in a guided gallery walk. Do you know what "Elephants Get Braces During February?" stands for? If you were in Music, you would. Here's a hint: it has to do with clef notes on the staff. We are playing drums together with 4 different parts: triangle, claves, bass drum and another set of drums.
We worked on problem solving with fractions and comparing and ordering fractions in Math. Ms. Belle posted some new games, tutorials, and activities on the math page of the website. Different characters in Esperanza Rising reacted differently to challenges. We used a jigsaw to help each other make inferences about characters based on how they reacted to Papa's death and the fire. We also were awesome at connecting some of the articles in the UDHR to some of the challenges faced in the book. Our spelling words this week have the au sound. We have a new tic tac toe board. Esperanza has lots of great vocabulary to help us with our cards this week. We had lots of Thanksgiving stories and decided that holiday traditions might make great blog entries. Mr. VanGo, the new daddy, had us explore Google Earth to find the latitude and longitude of important places, from our homes to the Empire State Building. We started the day with South Hill Shines! Some students shared their artwork (self-portraits) with the school. Others were in the drum corps that plays during transitions. We enjoyed the performances of 2nd graders, third graders and individual book talk students.
The whiteboard portion of our Eno board was put into place last night, so we now have a surface on which to write. The projector part may not be ready for another two weeks. We had an extended Math Olympiad/problem-solving session in Math today. Esperanza Rising is the new book we are reading. We learned about conditions in Mexico and California during the Great Depression, which is the setting for the book. We enjoyed the poetic language of the first chapter of the book. During K buddies today, we read, drew and built structures with our buddies. We When Ms. Belle came in to Music this morning, students were playing a game with a basketball and an inflatable basketball hoop. They had a chant that was syncopated (which means off-beat)
For Math today, we heard the story of the Numerator and Denominator twins, who want to be treated equally, always when they are equivalent. Change one by dividing by 3, and the other demands the same treatment. Also, Ms. Belle is just a "simple gal", who likes simple fractions as answers to problems. We worked very hard for an hour on our UDHR assessment. In the afternoon, we w . In PE we are continuing to work on our circus unit. We were juggling, and then did a free play with circus equipment.
In Math we made fraction strips and used them to make number lines. We made equivalent fractions with area models and multiplication. In extra time, many of us worked on our blog posts. Our time in the computer lab included time to do research about authors or time periods for our book jacket project. We could also use the time to do research for our blog. Mrs. Vann posted passwords for the databases from the library website. Kids should put this into their backpacks. After lunch, we had a lovely silent reading time. We also watched another section of the movie "What's on Your Plate?? about nutrition and food systems. Tomorrow is our Human Rights exam. Vocabulary cards are due. 2 days until the book jacket We did circus skills in PE this morning.
In Math we had clinics to follow up on our Friday exam. We worked on fix-ups in our Math books as well. It was Ms. Jen's last day. We know she'll do a great job in her next student teaching job. We connected our Nepal article to the UDHR articles. We worked very well in small groups. We will have an essay test on Thursday. We will read a similar article, and students will need to make the connections between another firsthand account of rights being withheld and the articles of the UDHR. Tonight students are bringing home a sheet to list some ideas that they can blog about over the next few months. We will be switching to writing blogs in class during the 7:40 to 8::10 time and during our Extra Time instead of doing DOL and writing prompts. This paper should stay in the children's organizer so they can refer to the assignment and to their ideas if they get stuck. The particulars of the assignment (ie. do it on a word processor and spell check before copying into the blog) are listed under ELA > Writing> Blogging, as well as some links for ideas about what to blog about and some links to exemplary student blogs. At the end of the day we started a "Mad-Lib" like activity to tell what we ate and did on Sunday, and to think about what changes we could make, if any, to be even healthier. Tomorrow there will be a sub In Music we played with frogs. They were wooden percussion instruments.
We had a long but fair Math test. We got two brain breaks after that. for Human Rights we read about people in Nepal who weren't allowed to open schools in their village. We have homework finding vocabulary in the article and making flash cards from it. To end the day, we explored another nutrition food-choice game. Homework is to write 2 paragraphs: one describing the game and whether it is a good activity to learn about nutrition, and another paragraph comparing this game to the one we tried last week. The links to both games are on Edmodo. Students brought home report cards today. They are invited to come to their conference for part or all of the time. We have 8 days until the first due date for our book project. |
AuthorThis blog has (almost) daily posts about our shenanigans and hard work. We post together at the end of the school day. Archives
June 2014
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